Crush
by Mizufae
Summary: What happened after Sam crushed Freddie's new phone? Revenge, that's what! Pre-Seddie
1. Chapter 1

If Freddie was the killing sort of man, he could kill Sam for this. He didn't blame Spencer, he didn't blame Gibby, he didn't blame anyone but Sam. Sitting in his immaculate room, editing the clips for iCrushIt, Freddie seethed and fumed over the events unfolding frame by frame before his eyes. He should have seen it coming, of course.

* * *

Earlier that day, Freddie had sauntered into the iCarly studio, hips swaggering. "Hey, ladies," he announced to the two girls, who were painting each other's toenails. Carly said hello back, and Sam waved and grunted over her shoulder at him. He fidgeted with Camera B for about ten seconds before he couldn't take it anymore. "Guess what I got?" Freddie asked the room at large, pointing his hip towards Carly and Sam.

"Padded underwear to keep your skinny butt from falling out of your pants?" That was Sam, of course, not concentrating enough on Carly's blue toenails to keep from insulting him.

"What do you care about my butt, anyway? And, no. I got a PearPhone!" Freddie proudly took his new phone out of its holster on his belt and showed it to Carly.

Sam was laughing. "You wear it in a... holster? What are you, a mall cop?"

"It came free to the first twenty people in line!" Freddie defended, and then shouted "hey!" when Sam snatched it out of his hand. She immediately started poking at it.

"How much did you shell out for this thing, anyway?"

"Doesn't matter. I saved for a while, though. Give it back!"

Sam played keepaway, easily jumping onto the hood of the carseat and holding his phone out of Freddie's reach. As a matter of fact, Freddie had saved allowance, done extra chores, and some freelance web design on the side, for nearly four months in order to afford it. The sight of Sam dangling his shiny new phone in the air like it was some kind of cat toy made him panic. He waved his arms futilely.

"How much do you love your phone, Fredward?" Sam danced a bit, swinging the phone around. Carly was keeping out of this situation, blowing nonchalantly on her toes.

"I don't love it, just give it back!"

"Tell me you looove it!"

"Give! It! Back!" Freddie clambered up onto the hood of the carseat and lunged for the phone, but Sam was too fast and fell gracefully back into the seat as he leaped past. He ended up in a heap, face-first, on the floor, groaning. Why did he always end up smashed into the floor whenever Sam started something? Freddie moaned some more, mostly for effect.

There was a delightful chiming sound. It was the PearPhone default ringtone. It even sounded expensive. Freddie rolled over to see the shining edge of the phone stuck in his face. "It's for you," Sam said, helping him up with a rough pull on the shoulder.

It had turned out to be Gibby, asking if he needed to bring anything for the extra filming today. He didn't, according to Sam, who said that they had everything they needed already.

Over the next hour, Sam taunted Freddie about his gadget love at least three times. While clearing out the studio and setting up the crushing table, it was "When you get married, are you going to keep the name Benson, or go more traditional and take the surname PearPhone?"

Over making a disgusting-yet-crushable sandwich of anchovies, pickles, olives and pimento cheese, Sam snidely said, "I bet you named your phone Carly, and you hold it tenderly in your arms when you fall asleep."

Over finding Spencer and helping him to unglue a soda can from his hand, she looked around Spencer's shoulder and declared "You love gadgets because they're the only things clean enough for your mom to approve of."

Dropping Spencer's hand, Freddie rebuffed "Don't bring my mom into this!"

"Why not? She's got you so brainwashed, the only girl you'll bring home to dinner will have to be constructed in a clean room!"

"Where do you even get these ideas? I just like them because I like having the right tool for the job. It's like using a scalpel instead of a bandsaw for surgery!" Freddie had forgotten Spencer entirely, who was caught, confused as can be, between Sam and Freddie spitting fireballs at each other.

"If you were my doctor, I'd die from disgust!"

"I am NOT in love with my phone! It's just cool, and better for everything! It's like using this sledgehammer instead of a shoe for iCrushIt!" Freddie wielded the hammer in question, swinging violently under its weight.

"Woah woah WOAH there, kiddos!" Spencer snapped into action, grabbing the hammer out of Freddie's hands and pushing Sam down onto the couch. "No touching the big hammer. I thought we talked about this. I'm the designated grownup around here, except when it comes to what?" Spencer looked at the two fuming kids expectantly.

"Feeding fish, wearing pants, and knowing when to call 911." Sam and Freddie recited in unison.

"That's right. Now, I don't care what this fight is about, but I declare it to be over, and you have to promise me that you will never weild a hammer at each other again. Got that?"

"Got it," said Freddie.

"Yeah, sure," said Sam.

"Good. I don't want either of you getting taken away to Yakima, either." Spencer hefted the sledgehammer over his shoulder and went to answer a knock at the door. It was Gibby.

The next thirty minutes were what made Freddie so enraged, not the whole afternoon of Sam making fun of him. It happened so fast. Gibby said hello, Carly ducked in to say hi and then quickly ensconced herself back into her room to write a history paper, they all went upstairs to the studio (along with the sandwich and hammer), and set everything up for a new episode of iCrushIt.

Freddie's phone rang again. Spencer was waiting on the sidelines, hammer at the ready, prepared for the signal. It was Felix on the phone, trying to hook up his grandmother's television. Somewhere along the way, Freddie had become known as the guy to call in case of problems like that. Probably it was because he was such an excellent and upstanding member of the AV Club, thought Freddie. He didn't notice Sam tossing the sandwich away, or Sam and Gibby heading out to the hallway, or that Gibby started filming.

One moment he was explaining about coaxial cables to Felix, and the next his phone was grabbed out of his hand and Spencer was bringing the sledgehammer down on the slick, shiny plastic in slow-motion. Time went syrupy. Freddie's brain turned off. Sam told Gibby to stop filming, Spencer was apologizing, and Freddie felt like he was a piece of paper with a hole burnt in the middle of it.

Sam had actually crushed his phone! His brand new, super expensive, totally out of stock, amazing phone! And now, on top of that thorough indignity, Freddie had to sit down, edit together a short out of the occurrence, and put it online to share with the world.

He was going to get her back. Freddie would find something that Sam had worked hard to get, and destroy it completely. He finished editing the short, and stared at his own bewildered face in the last frame until the pixels started bleeding together. Then, Freddie uploaded it, his plan for revenge percolating in the back of his brain. Freddie imagined Sam's face, distraught and pained like his own. Revenge would be sweet.

* * *

A week passed by, and nobody was wise to Freddie's plan. He was biding his time, watching Sam, paying attention to her every word and every move, to find exactly the right thing to destroy. He felt sneaky. He felt cruel. He felt bad, and he enjoyed every second of it.

Freddie's first impulse was to somehow chop off Sam's hair. It was gorgeous, and he'd always wondered how long it had taken to grow it out. But no, she didn't care about it. It was just there, on her head. On Monday she had willingly dipped it into paint to assist Spencer in a sculpture. It was washable, he had claimed, but Sam should have known by now not to trust him, and now her normally shiny gold hair was tinged slightly red. Freddie liked it, honestly, but Sam didn't appear to care. So the hair was out.

After a few days of thinking about Sam constantly, Freddie realized a few things. Foremost, she did not value objects much at all. She'd happily destroy something or wreck something if it meant there would be a satisfying result, even if it was just a good crunching sound. She owned very little that Freddie could see. He'd not yet been to her house, but he only ever saw her with things for school or stuff Carly was sharing with her, like nail polish, lip gloss, or bows and arrows. You know, girly things. She had plenty of clothes, but they were often a bit ragged or worn, and Freddie knew she didn't treat her twenty pairs of different plaid shorts with care. Apart from that, and the food she consumed voraciously, Sam seemingly lived a life devoid of valuable objects.

He was beginning to think that his plan for revenge wasn't going to happen, because Sam didn't care about anything enough to equal four months of savings destroyed in one unthinking blow. That was when she sat down in front of him in the cafeteria.

"What's goin' on, Freds?" Sam was usually in a good mood at lunch time. Today, it seemed, she was deciding on a new way to say Freddie's name. "Fredster? Freddo? Fredwina?" She rolled each one around in her mouth for a while.

"Nothing much. Got an A on my math quiz, not that you'd care." Freddie stole some fries from Carly as Carly caught a big pretzel Sam tossed her way. Sam reached over and wordlessly yoinked Freddie's apple juice. This was when Freddie realized the key to his revenge was starring him right in the face.

Carly's words of congratulation regarding the math quiz faded into a faint buzz as Freddie stared down his target. Drake Parker stared back from the shiny blue surface of Sam's prized lunchbox. Sam and her mom had evidently hitched a ride with her Uncle Ivan the trucker all the way to Los Angeles to see Drake Parker in concert, and Sam had come back last summer with the lunchbox and every Drake Parker CD yet produced. She hadn't shut up about how great the concert was for at least four months.

Oh yes, the lunchbox would get crushed, and it would be very sweet indeed.

* * *

**A/N The iCrushIt filmed in this chapter is real, and you can watch it on the iCarly website. It is kind of amazingly great. Thanks to lj user femme_cat for pointing out the plotbunny regarding the lunchbox. This will be maybe two or three chapters long, I haven't decided yet. It's supposed to take place pretty early on, before Freddie mellowed out like he has in Season 2. **

**And now, a question: I have a bit of an idea for a shorter sequel to my seminal Seddie work of unbearable genius, Point & Click. I wrote P&C to be self-contained, and as I kind of hate when people create huge personal canons that I can never keep track of, I really want to shy away from continuing to write in that universe. But I'm not sure how to write the idea I have without presuming most of the things that occurred in P&C to start off. So my question is, would you all like to read more things after Point & Click, or would you rather I keep writing oneshots and independent multichaptered works that can be read alone? PM me or review and include your answer, please! Thank you so much for reading!**


	2. Chapter 2

Freddie concocted a plan. Simpler is better when dealing with multimedia equipment, fractions, and evil schemes, so he went right for Sam's weakest spot: snacks.

On Monday night, he asked his mom for lunch money for the next day, walked over to Carly's, and made himself a bag lunch anyway. When Carly asked what he was up to, he lied and explained that his Mom was pushing leftover fishloaf sandwiches on him. After working on some homework together, Freddie could feel the lie burning in the back of his throat, and had to get out of the loft before he blurted his plan to Carly. She wouldn't understand.

Tuesday morning, Freddie woke up extra-early, biked down the road to the convenience store, and bought a twelve-pack of Fatcakes with his six bucks of extra lunch money. When he got back to his apartment to hide his ill-gotten snackfood, Carly and Spencer were just leaving theirs for school.

"Want a ride, Freddie?" Spencer jingled his keys at him. Freddie quickly hid the Fatcakes in his backpack and accepted.

The ride to school was uncomfortably quiet. Carly sighed and came up with something to break the silence. "So, any ideas for more iCarly extras?"

"Oh! Actually, yes." Freddie scratched his nose and looked at Carly through her reflection in the side view mirror. "More iCrushIt. We never did crush a sandwich like we'd planned. And you still have all that pimento cheese to use up."

"Pimentos, in cheese! Who even thinks this stuff up?" Carly's face crinkled with brief disgust.

Freddie shrugged, and addressed her brother. "Think you're up for more crushing today, Spencer?"

"Am I ever not up for crushing? Though, you have to make sure I don't crush something I'm not supposed to. I still feel so bad about your phone." Spencer turned into the school park & ride, and cast a mournful look over his shoulder at Freddie.

"Don't worry, just go on my signal, and my signal only." Freddie swallowed, hard.

That had worked out conveniently, Freddie thought. He pushed his way past the two idiot wrestlers that flanked his locker, trying to get the Fatcakes safely tucked away before they smashed him into the wall and crushed the cakes flat. One of them, the curly-haired one, shoved Freddie up against the lockers when he stood back up, explaining something about a "monkey-hold." Freddie let the sharp edges of the locker grills push into his ribs and completely ignored the idea that he might be using Spencer against his wishes.

Now, to see if Sam brought her lunchbox today. He was in luck. Across the hall he could see the glint of its blue plastic as Sam dug into it and withdrew a chunk of beef jerky. Freddie crossed the hall after weighing down his backpack with books for first period and nodded hello to her. "Let's do another iCrushIt today, okay?"

Sam's eyes looked up at him as she gnawed on her jerky. Distracted by the saltiness, she mumbled something that sounded affirmative, and then noticed Gibby walking up to his locker nearby. "Just a minute, gotta go pants the nub." In a second she was three lockers away and Gibby's pants were around his ankles. He'd learned to start wearing classy boxers (today's were blue paisley) but he had yet to get his head around wearing belts.

"Um, see you at Carly's later!" Freddie called to Sam, and she gave him a thumbs up as she sprinted down the hallway in the opposite direction. Why did Sam so thoughtlessly torment kids like that? She obviously deserved getting taken down a peg or two.

Throughout the day, Freddie's resolve was strengthened. In biology, Sam let the class snake out, making their normally timid teacher freak out and cancel the rest of class, so Slithers wouldn't get trampled before he was found. During lunch, Sam traded her ham sandwich for Freddie's peanut butter and jelly, and then promptly traded that with Jeremy for his cheese and tomato sandwich.

Freddie watched with horror as Jeremy bit into it and started to swell up within seconds. "You said this was almond butter!" Jeremy's face became rounder with every word, and then he was up, running to the nurse's office, while Sam doubled over with mirth.

"Sam, you know Jeremy has a peanut problem." Carly chastised her, and then shook her head with disapproval as Sam took back the pb&j to eat for herself.

Freddie glared at Drake Parker's eternally smiling face, and thought to himself that if Drake had Sam as a friend, he wouldn't be so happy all the time. Drake and his guitar shifted out of view as Sam packed up and the lunch bell rang.

* * *

After school everything was going according to plan. Freddie set up Camera B and the crushing table while Sam and Carly were in Carly's room, talking about hair or something. Freddie didn't really know, and he didn't really care. All he cared about was that the Fatcakes and Sam's beloved Drake lunchbox were sitting carefully in the corner of the iCarly studio. He'd pilfered it from her backpack while she was in the bathroom earlier.

Freddie took the elevator down to the kitchen, and proceeded to make a disgusting sandwich. He pulled out a near-rotting orange and a little carton of chocolate milk. While he was putting away the pimento cheese, Spencer came out of his room to say hello. "How am I gonna crush all of that at once?" he asked, rubbing his hair dry with a towel.

"Oh, I needed to talk to you about that. We're going to put it into a lunchbox. I figure it's a way to ramp it up from just a sandwich. I hope it'll pop like a grape in the slo-mo!"

"Very cool idea, little dude." Spencer smiled, and went to grab his visor and sledgehammer. "I'm prepared to crush!"

The two of them dragged Sam away from Carly, who had Sam's hair up in about seven different ponytails. "There's crushing to be done, Carls." Sam had happily gotten away, and they clambered up to the iCarly studio. Spencer stood at the ready to the side. Sam arranged the gross lunch things on the crushing table. Freddie turned on Camera B.

"Why, hello , didn't see you there!" Freddie hammed it up for the camera terribly, he knew, but he just wasn't used to being on the recording side of the lens.

"On today's episode of iCrushIt, we're going to totally smash the juices out of these here lunch objects!" Sam gestured to the table like she was on _The Price is Right_.

"Oh, look, Sam, here's a Fatcake!" Freddie's pulse quickened. He tossed an opened Fatcake into Sam's hands and dumped the remaining eleven around her feet. Then, in a dash, he filled Sam's lunchbox with the sandwich, milk and orange, shut it, stuck it back on the table, and screamed "CRUSH IT, SPENCE!"

Sam, distracted from the surprise Fatcake, and not aware that her lunchbox was in danger, heard Spencer's wild scream, and booked it for the shelter of the little half-wall. Freddie ran along with her, his head whipping back to see the plan going smooth as butter.

There was a huge, heavy cracking sound and an unappetizing squelch as the lunchbox broke into pieces, and the insides were smooshed flat. Spencer's shirt got sprayed with orange pips and milk, the floor had a splatter of pimento cheese, and all down the legs of the table were dripping, questionable fluids.

Spencer was breathing heavily. "I'm gonna need another shower."

Sam swallowed the last bite of the Fatcake that was in her hands. Freddie looked at her and saw her eyes open wide with shock. She was turning an unappealing shade of red.

He scrambled up and in front of Camera B. "Woah, awesome job, Spencer! Thanks for watching iCrush-aaugh!" Sam had launched herself at Freddie, landing him straight on top of a couple of crinkling, unopened Fatcakes, pushing his face into a puddle of milk. Sam had him pinned down, straddling his body, and her face was inches away from his.

"You crushed DRAKE!" Little bits of cake flew into Freddie's face. "Mom got him for me! He's limited edition!"

"You deserved it!"

"I'll never get another one! You don't understand! Mom got him for me!" Sam didn't punch Freddie, or really hurt him. She just had him pushed hard into the ground, and kept pushing, with all her weight. She screamed about Freddie crushing Drake until she ran out of words, and then she just screamed noises at him, until she ran out of breath.

Spencer broke it up. He picked Sam up off of Freddie like she was a kitten, pulling on the back of her shirt, and helped Freddie up. His face was drawn. "You should go, Freddie."

Freddie dashed over to his laptop and unplugged it, making sure the video was archived, and ran home.

**A/N This chapter was insanely hard to write. I really wrote myself into a corner in the first part. But I slogged through, and here we go! It's a lot less funny than I wanted it to be, and a bit out of character, and argh. I can think no more about it! Moving on, Crush will be one more chapter, hopefully a better one, and then it's on to other ideas. I'm thinking it's time for my Sokka/Toph phase. Same pairing, different show, amirite?? Thanks for your continuing reviews and visits, I appreciate them more than you know. **


	3. Chapter 3

The only sound in Freddie's room was the whirring of his hard drive spinning, compiling the edited video for iCrushIt. Freddie sat cross-legged on his bed, hands warmed by laptop heat, watching and rewatching the last two minutes of the video. His stomach grumbled. It was nearing midnight and he'd all but skipped dinner.

After leaving an unhappy Spencer and a downright terrifying Sam in the iCarly studio that afternoon, Freddie had come home to the unpleasant scent of fishloaf cooking in the oven. Already lacking an appetite from the feeling of dread in his stomach, Freddie pushed his portion around his plate, trying in vain to cover it up with lettuce leaves. It also served as an unpleasant reminder of his lies to Carly and his mother the night before. Freddie ruminated on the leftover fishloaf sandwiches he'd inevitably have to take to school the rest of the week. As soon as he could, Freddie excused himself from the dinner table, citing a headache. More lies, Freddie thought.

He had tried to do homework, but when that turned out to be futile, Freddie decided to edit the lunchbox crushing. The slow motion was amazing. It really did pop like a grape, splattering even the camera lense with droplets of chocolate milk. Sam's reaction to surprise Fatcakes was adorable. Spencer's scream was wacky and infectiously funny. It would be one of the best iCrushIts ever, except for the last two minutes.

"_I'll never get another one! You don't understand! Mom got him for me!"_

The top of Sam's head was the only thing visible on screen, her wild ponytails swinging around the bottom of the frame. But the audio was crystal clear, and Freddie listened to it over and over.

What was it about the stupid lunchbox that made her so crazy? And she called it Drake, like it was a person! Freddie didn't think that was normal, that's for sure. Okay, it was something she cared about, obviously. Why, he had no idea. Girls could get kind of nuts about pop stars, and Drake Parker was an up and coming musician from San Diego. But just because he probably didn't have a huge run of lunchboxes was no reason to nearly have an embolism about one getting broken.

Maybe if he showed Sam what an amazing iCrushIt it had been, she'd get over it. If he thought about it that way, the episode with his phone getting crushed was pretty great, too. But as he listened to her shout over and over about her mom getting it for her, Freddie came to the realization that Sam just getting over it wouldn't happen.

The red numbers on his bedside clock flipped to 12:00. In seven hours, Freddie would have to get up and deal with a Sam who wanted him dead, a Carly who would likely never speak to him again, and the potential fate of getting kicked off of iCarly. That made him reconsider his options.

Freddie scrolled back through the timeline of the iCrushIt video until he got a good frame of Spencer's face, looking down at Freddie pinned on the floor. He looked hurt; there was no other word for it.

It wasn't hard at all for Freddie to sneak past his mother asleep on the living room couch, the television muted. He padded over and pulled a blanket up around her shoulders. Then, he stepped out into the hallway and took a deep breath. Three knocks, a pause, and then Spencer's voice came through the door. "Carly's in bed, Freddie."

"I know, I checked her IM status. I wanted to talk to you."

Spencer opened the door after maybe half a minute, but didn't invite Freddie in. He had a mop in his hand. "You should clean up the studio."

The mop made a splooshing noise as Freddie dunked it into the bucket and swirled it around. He'd grown used to helping the girls clean up the iCarly studio after some of the messier bits on the show, but pimento cheese and crusty chocolate milk were new experiences. Thrilling, thought Freddie, as he pushed the mop around.

"I'm not going to put it up on the site," he said, not looking at Spencer, who was leaning against the window with his arms crossed.

"Good. And I'm not going to do any more crushing for you guys, either."

"What?" Freddie stopped in the middle of his mopping. "But you have to! It was a really great crush, Spencer. It would just be mean to Sam, is all, if I put up the video. We can crush other things."

"Look, how am I supposed to know that neither of you are going to do this again? I break enough stuff on my own, just by walking around. I can't live with the guilt and worry that I might be crushing something one of you cares about again." Spencer looked pained.

"I had no idea Sam would freak out like she did, honestly."

"You didn't? But her mom got it for her. How could you not have known?"

"She kept saying that, too. What is the big deal about her mom getting it for her?" Freddie started mopping again, scrubbing at a particularly stubborn spot.

Spencer sat down on a beanbag. "Freddie, sometimes I forget that you haven't been friends with Sam as long as Carly and I have. You three just get along so well, it's easy to think you've been at it for years."

Freddie smiled a little at this, but quickly frowned, remembering that his spot as iCarly's technical producer was tenuous at best, now.

"Sam's got a weird family, you know that. I mean, it's not any weirder than mine, I guess." Spencer continued. "But I don't remember Sam ever going anywhere with her mom, just the two of them, and Sam coming back not only having had a good time, but with something frivolous like that lunchbox."

"Yeah, when I was plotting, I sort of noticed how Sam didn't have much to her name that was expendable."

"You were plotting?"

"Oh, er, yeah? And it was fun! I don't know where it went so wrong." Freddie turned red. "I'm really sorry about this whole thing. When Sam does something like this, she always gets away with it. I guess I'm just not cut out for crime."

Spencer frowned. "Sam isn't, either. Carly says she'll learn to deal with her 'impulse control issues' like I did." He quoted into the air.

"Look, I want to fix this. I don't want to screw everything up because I was mad at Sam. I mean, I'm mad at her every day! I should be able to live with it." Freddie wrung the mop out, and began to sponge off the table.

"I kind of feel bad about letting either of you get away with it, too. You used me, Freddie!" Spencer put his hands over his heart and feigned a wound.

The broken pieces of the lunchbox came uncrusted from the table with a pop. The sides, hinges, handle and latch were all irreparable, but the faces, front and back, seemed mostly okay. One of Drake's faces was a little chipped, and the other side had a few sparkly music notes missing. But they weren't warped.

"Do you think you could make a new lunchbox out of the pieces?" Freddie asked, handing them over to Spencer's curious hands.

He looked at them from all angles, scratching at the surface lightly with a fingernail, and smiled. "Using your brain again, are we?" Spencer cocked an eyebrow in Freddie's general direction.

* * *

School the next day was uncomfortable, to say the least. The classes that he shared with Carly or Sam were icy and silent. At lunch, nobody traded anything, and Sam brought a flattened meatloaf sandwich in a brown paper bag. Freddie felt so awful, looking at the greasy paper bag across from him, that he mumbled something about extra credit and finished his fishloaf leftovers in the school library.

Halfway through the last class of the day, Freddie's phone vibrated. He jumped in his seat, and scrounged to turn off his old phone before the teacher caught him. When the last bell of the day rang, Freddie hung back and turned his phone on. It was a text from Spencer. "_Get pic of drake from tiger beat sept issue 4 lunchbox. Call me when u get home._" A Tiger Beat? Did that magazine even exist anymore? Freddie ducked around the corner when he saw Sam walking towards him, and ran for his locker. From there, he hopped on his bike and pedaled to the nearest drugstore.

The discrete brown paper bag that the smirking employee of the CVS had slid the Tiger Beat into crinkled under Freddie's grip. He felt wrong, hiding in the back hallway of the Bushwell Plaza, dialing Spencer's cell. "I got the magazine. I had to ask the clerk special! I told her it was for my sister." Freddie frowned, another lie down.

"But it's the September issue, right? The one with Parker in it?" Spencer came out of the back door of his apartment, talking on his phone and directly to Freddie's face at the same time. He had a welding helmet on, and giant protective gloves.

Freddie pulled the magazine out, and flipped to the article near the back. "Top Ten Most Adorbs Musicians of the Summer, right here, at number seven." He shuddered a little after saying "adorbs" and handed it over to Spencer.

"It's safe, Carly's writing a paper and Sam didn't show up today." They walked into the apartment, and into Spencer's room. Freddie's eyes bulged at the sight. Pieces of steel sheeting littered the ground. There were power tools everywhere. No wonder Spencer had welding gear on. "Do you think you can handle an airbrush?" Spencer handed Freddie a nozzle and pointed to a large white box.

"When I said make a new lunchbox, I didn't mean that you had to go to all this trouble..." Freddie looked down at the steel shape lying open in the white box. It was shaped just like a plastic lunchbox, with hinges and rounded corners. It was just, well, made of steel.

"I might have gotten a little carried away." Spencer flipped down the welding mask and heated up a piece of metal that looked like a handle. Gripping it with two clamps, he made a smooth bend in the handle, and held it up to the lunchbox. "That'll fit, don't you think?"

They worked in tandem for the next few hours. After airbrushing the new box a matching shiny blue in three coats, Spencer worked at meticulously repainting the chipped areas of Drake's face. The magazine was for reference. Freddie learned a lot about varnishes, and got to pound the pins into the hinges of the handle.

Around six o'clock in the afternoon, Freddie and Spencer were wearing protective goggles. "Okay, Freddie, are you ready to engage molecular bonding?" Spencer held a very tiny bottle of glue over the backside of the repainted plastic lunchbox face. He brushed some drops of glue onto the plastic, and did the same to the steel lunchbox. There was a faint hissing noise. "Clamp! Clamp!" Spencer shouted, and Freddie worked fast to set the pieces in place so they would fuse together.

After opening a window, they sat back and admired their work. "If Carly knew what sorts of chemicals I use in here, I don't think she'd let me make sculptures ever again." Spencer rubbed his hair sheepishly.

It was a terrifying object. It glimmered and glinted, a deep glossy coating very reminiscent of the PearPhone, only blue. On the face, Drake Parker smiled, possibly more conventionally attractive than before, thanks to Spencer's hand painting. The hinges were reinforced, the handle was ergonomic, and it weighed about seven pounds, empty. All of the edges had been filed smooth, but that wouldn't stop Sam from doing some pretty destructive things with it, nonetheless.

"Come on, let's get some dinner." Spencer gave the lunchbox a glance and found his car keys. Freddie grabbed it on his way out of the messy room; it was slightly warm to the touch. In the living room, Spencer was shouting up the stairs to his sister. "Carly! I'm going out to get some Thai food, you want the usual?"

A faint "Yeah, with extra ginger!" came from the stairway. Freddie and Spencer headed out, stomachs rumbling.

In the car, Freddie sat, fidgeting with the lunchbox in his lap. "Thanks for doing this, Spencer. You really went above and beyond."

"Actually, I'm thinking of making more of them to sell. I wonder how much I could get away with charging for a custom one?" Spencer turned down a road Freddie wasn't familiar with. The city blocks changed to residential ones, small apartment buildings interspersing with old houses . He pulled into the driveway of one.

"Is this Sam's house?" Freddie asked, looking at the small yellow house with the cheerful blue door. It didn't look very much like he had pictured it. He'd imagined some rundown hovel with a car on cinder blocks in the front lawn, not a regular house with big trees in the yard and a hand painted "Beware Grumpy Cat" sign on the fence.

They got out of the car and walked up to the front door, but before Freddie could ring the doorbell, he was whacked in the back of the head with something small and hard. "Hey, nub! What are you doing here? Get off my lawn!"

Sam's face appeared in the window of a treehouse perched between the branches of a maple in the front yard. She had a handful of brown balls in her hand. On second glance, Freddie realized they were walnuts. He looked at Spencer, who shrugged. There was a ladder leading up to the treehouse, so Freddie girded himself, dodged a few more walnuts, and made his way up.

"I come in peace!" he shouted, guarding his face with his free hand as he emerged through the little hole in the floor of the treehouse.

Sam sighed, and sat down on some big water-stained cushions. In front of her was a pile of walnuts. To the side, a hammer. She grasped the hammer and whack! smashed open a nut. Around her feet, shells littered the wooden floor. "Fine, what do you want?" She wiggled her fingers and pulled out a nutmeat, chewing it quickly.

"Spencer sort of explained to me why you were so upset yesterday. And, he felt bad about doing the actual crushing. So he and I spent all day making this for you." Freddie pulled the lunchbox out from behind his back. Sam reached out and pulled it towards her.

"What's in here, bricks?" Sam opened it up to find it empty.

"It's, well, it's made out of steel. Totally uncrushable. That's kind of the point, I guess." Freddie was nervous. He realized that he was in a confined space with Sam, and he had just essentially given her a blunt weapon. "I'll have you know, I had to buy a Tiger Beat so Spencer could repaint Drake's face right!"

That did it. Sam started to laugh. Then, she took a deep breath, lifted the lunchbox up, and brought it crashing down on top of a walnut. It split open cleanly. Sam's smile grew wide.

"Hey Sam, you wanna get some Thai food with us?" Spencer's voice came from below.

"You know I love peanuts with shrimp, Spence!" And with that, everything seemed to resolve itself.

Over noodles of varying sorts, Freddie asked if they were even. Sam cocked an eyebrow. "Nope" was all she said. What was he going to have to do to be even? He had visions of all his beloved cameras getting crushed by different hammers. All the money he had saved, down the tubes, just for some stupid revenge!

* * *

A day passed. Carly had gotten the message that Freddie could be spoken to again. Sam bought her lunch from the cafeteria, opting not to bring her new lunchbox to school for some reason. After school, rehearsal for tomorrow's iCarly went well enough that Freddie felt certain his spot as tech producer remained solid.

Friday morning, Freddie watched as the two wrestlers smacked into each other right over his locker. He needed some books for first period, and really wasn't feeling up to getting shoved around so early in the morning. The three minute bell rang, signaling the start of a scramble by most students to get to their classes. Freddie took a deep breath and dived into the fray.

WHANG! Before he could get caught in the middle of some new sort of monkey hold, a noise reverberated from the locker door next to him and something solid and blue blocked the grabby hands of the blond jock. It was Sam's lunchbox, and she was standing there between Freddie and the idiots. "Let the dork get his stuff!" she yelled at the two boys, and smacked each of their behinds pertly with her lunchbox.

"Ah, um, thanks!" He packed his bag with haste and walked to English with Sam.

"I know what you're thinking, Fredward, but we aren't even yet." And she ominously shook her lunchbox at him. Thoughts of lunchbox-shaped bruises sprang into Freddie's mind.

All throughout the morning's classes, Freddie worried. Was she going to take him out behind the bleachers and smash his face in? Was she going to humiliate him more than usual? He knew she was capable.

Freddie approached their lunch table with trepidation. He sat down, spreading his meal in front of him. Carly snatched his carrot sticks. Sam grabbed Carly's little bag of chips. Freddie wondered what sort of gross food Sam would offer to trade. Her lunchbox opened silently; Freddie had made sure the hinges were correctly adjusted. Then, on top of his pastrami sandwich, Sam placed a PearPhone. Etched into the back of its glossy surface were the initials FB, obviously hand-scratched. Freddie choked on his lemonade.

"What? Where did you get this? You didn't steal it, did you?" Freddie grabbed the PearPhone anyway, paging through the contacts, seeing just Sam, Carly and Spencer's numbers had been entered.

Carly thumped Freddie on the back as he coughed. "No, she didn't steal it."

"Yeah, come on, I could go to juvie for that." Sam's arms were crossed in front of her. "My Aunt Robin works at a Pear Store in Tacoma. She got me a factory refurbished one on the family discount."

"Isn't your Aunt Robin the one who can crush walnuts between her toes?" Carly asked.

"Yeah, that's why I thought of her." Sam smiled, looking at Freddie knowingly.

Lunch went well after that. Freddie took pictures of each of them to put on their contact info on his brand new refurbished phone. He pocketed it when he left for social studies, sad that he'd left his holster at home.

In social studies, they had quiet study time. Freddie's teacher was the sort who liked kids who were seen and not heard. A hush reigned for all of fifteen minutes, with only the sound of pages turning. Then, Freddie's pocket vibrated, and a Drake Parker song burst out from it at full volume. "Augh!" was the sound that came out of Freddie's mouth, as he jumped out of his chair, trying desperately to turn off the ringtone. "Sorry, sorry! It's new! I didn't mean to have it on!" he defended to his teacher. She just grumbled, and handed him a detention slip.

When he sat back down, Freddie checked the phone. Sam had texted him. "_Now we're even :)_"

**A/N And that's Crush finished! Yes, I totally yoinked the walnut thing from Jenette's role on Zoey101. I think it's definitely a viable Sam character trait. Also, I think in the Schneiderverse, it'd be Drake Parker, not Drake Bell, don't you? This chapter was so long, and the previous one so short, I might go through and rework my chapter breaks at a later date. If you have anything to say, leave me a review, please! Thanks for reading.**


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